Opposition Voters in Venezuela Pick a Challenger for Chávez

Henrique Capriles Radonski won an election to run against President Hugo Chávez.Credit
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

CARACAS, Venezuela — The country’s political opposition overcame years of division on Sunday as millions of voters turned out in an impressive show of strength to choose a single candidate to take on President Hugo Chávez, in what is shaping up to be a bruising and potentially tight election campaign.

The challenger, who won a primary election held jointly on Sunday by a spectrum of opposition parties, is Henrique Capriles Radonski, the fresh-faced governor of Miranda, one of the country’s most populous states, which includes a large swath of Caracas, the capital. Mr. Capriles, a political moderate, will challenge Mr. Chávez in the general election scheduled for Oct. 7, which will inevitably be seen as a referendum on the socialist incumbent’s tenure of more than 13 years.

Speaking before thousands of supporters in Caracas on Sunday night, Mr. Capriles vowed to bring the country together.

“I aspire to be the president of all Venezuelans,” Mr. Capriles said. “The message is clear. Venezuelans are fed up with confrontation, with division.” He criticized Mr. Chávez’s policies but did not mention him by name.

Mr. Chávez has repeatedly dismissed his opponents as the craven remnants of an old order dominated by a small, often corrupt oligarchy, while casting himself as the champion of revolution and a remade society.

It is not clear whether Mr. Chávez, 57, can make that stick against Mr. Capriles, who is 39.

Yet even with a unified opposition behind him, Mr. Capriles faces the steepest of uphill climbs running against the agile Mr. Chávez, who still enjoys strong support from important constituencies, like the poor people who have seen their lives improve under his government, and the government and state-owned company employees who may feel that their jobs depend on Mr. Chávez remaining president.

Before the primary on Sunday, Mr. Chávez said he would give the opposition “the beating of the century” in the general election, and he predicted that he would win by 40 percentage points. Mr. Chavez was re-elected easily in 2006 with 63 percent of the vote, against a divided opposition that lacked fresh personalities.

Luis Vicente León, a political analyst and pollster, said that though this year’s election “is an unbalanced fight,” the opposition is at its strongest in years and an upset is possible. Though there is deep polarization in the country, Mr. León said, polls show that about one-third of the electorate is undecided about whom to support in October.

That group is known here as the Ni-Nis, meaning Neither-Nors, committed neither to Mr. Chávez nor to the opposition. For Mr. Capriles to win, he must persuade these voters that he can improve their lives, not simply urge them to cast a vote against Mr. Chávez, Mr. León said.

The primary on Sunday was the first time that a group of different parties in Venezuela have asked voters to choose a unity candidate for them to back.

Officials said more than 2.9 million voters had taken part in the primary, with 95 percent of the vote counted, a larger turnout than many had expected. The high turnout could spell trouble for Mr. Chávez because it suggests that the opposition is energized and well organized. Mr. Capriles received more than 1.8 million votes, more than double the next closest finisher.

Though the opposition is more united than in the past, the charismatic Mr. Chávez still has vast advantages over any opponent, including control of an enormous pot of money from the state-run oil industry, social programs that pour money into poor neighborhoods and a ubiquitous propaganda machine that turns almost every government program into an advertisement for the president. Mr. Chávez and his supporters enjoy a nonstop presence on state television.

Mr. Chávez remains a larger-than-life figure here despite a fight with cancer and lingering questions about his health. He is a master showman with keen political instincts, presenting the world in stark us-versus-them colors and delighting in taunting his enemies.

In contrast, Mr. Capriles has sought so far not to lock horns with Mr. Chávez, saying the country is tired of the president’s bellicose talk and is ready for someone who can bring people together. He emphasizes his record as an administrator during his tenure as governor and, before that, as mayor of a section of Caracas.

Mr. Chávez tells his followers that the opposition, whom he calls retrograde and imperialist, will strip them of the social programs his government created. Mr. Capriles points to health clinics and food programs that his state built, saying he will continue the fight against poverty, only with better management.

Mr. Chávez is a burly former soldier who grew up in a family of modest means. Mr. Capriles is slightly built and comes from a wealthy family, with grandparents who were Polish Holocaust survivors.

The energy generated by Mr. Capriles is evident at his campaign stops, which can seem like a cross between rugby scrum and rock star frenzy.

At a recent rally in Maracay, a city west of Caracas, Mr. Capriles stepped out of a van and was immediately thronged by followers. Within minutes, his face was smudged with lipstick and the pockets of his bright green shirt were stuffed with notes, many of them from people asking for help in getting better housing, a chronic problem in Venezuela. He was swept up by the crowd and propelled along the city’s main commercial street for block after block, as some men pressed close to raise his hand overhead in a gesture of triumph while other people squeezed in to snap cellphone pictures.

Not even the firecrackers thrown at the crowd by menacing Chávez supporters on motorcycles could dampen the spirit.

Backers of Mr. Capriles and bystanders who happened upon the campaign event voiced deep dissatisfaction with Mr. Chávez’s government, citing a high crime rate, food shortages, corruption, a failure to deliver on promises and the president’s almost total control over most aspects of government and civic life.

“This man has me suffocated,” Arinda Cuellar, 65, said of Mr. Chávez. She said the clothing store where she works was recently robbed. “There is no safety,” she said. “We have nothing. There has to be a change.”

Still, Mr. Chávez’s own drawing power remains strong. Thousands of his supporters, known as Chavistas, thronged to a military parade in Caracas on Feb. 4, the 20th anniversary of the failed 1992 coup that Mr. Chávez led, and which he calls the seed of his later revolution.

“The revolution came and gave us refrigerators, kitchens, everything,” said Faida Camargo, 59, who was living in a wood hut with a dirt floor in a Caracas slum, without electricity or running water, before the Chávez government built houses for some residents. “Why do you think so many of us follow the president?”

But while the size of the crowd that turned out was impressive, the atmosphere was flat as people waited under a gray sky for the parade to start. The event lacked the energy of Mr. Capriles’ campaign appearances, suggesting a point of vulnerability for Mr. Chávez.

“He believes he is God,” Mr. Capriles said of the president in a recent interview. “He thinks he can’t lose, and that’s very good for us.”

María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on February 13, 2012, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Opposition Voters in Venezuela Pick a Challenger for Chávez. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe